Change Management & Innovation Interviews

One of the most significant challenges facing corporations today is the need to reduce environmental impact, without adversely affecting competitiveness. For a company the size of the technology giant 3M, with manufacturing and distribution sites in over 30 countries worldwide, this is a task of considerable magnitude. In this interview, Deconinck talks about 3M's continuing sustainability programme, and the importance of innovation for achieving both environmental and financial goals.

Tim Littlehales is the current Managing Director of Bridge. Bridge is an international consultancy specializing in leadership and organization development, and supporting large-scale change programmes. Bridge operates worldwide from offices in the UK, Singapore and Australia, working with some of the world's foremost thinking organizations across the commercial, public and third sectors.

Peter Fisk was recently described by Business Strategy Review as "one of the best new business thinkers."
His new book, Creative Genius, describes a process of accelerated innovation, bringing together rockstars and rocket scientists, entrepreneurs and designers to understand how to make better ideas happen faster.

Alan AtKisson began professional work on sustainability as executive editor of In Context: A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable Culture. In 1990, he and other colleagues co-founded the Sustainable Seattle initiative, later recognized by the United Nations as a model project in urban sustainability and indicator development. Alan introduced the concept of "sustainability change agents" through workshops and lectures, and to develop the tools and methods that are now called the ISIS Accelerator.

Vijay Govindarajan, known as VG, is the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at the Tuck School of Business and founding director of Tuck's Center for Global Leadership. Chris Trimble is an expert on making innovation happen in large organizations. He is a frequent speaker on the topic.

Professor Richard D'Aveni is a keynote speaker, consultant, CEO coach, informal interim CEO, strategic advisor, and off-site strategic decision process facilitator for companies in the US and Europe at the divisional and CEO-level. His clients have included AGFA, Delphi, GM, GE, Merrill Lynch, Motorola and PepsiCo. In Beating the Commodity Trap, D'Aveni provides a radical new framework for fighting back, drawing on an in-depth study of more than 30 industries.

M.J. Ryan is one of the creators of the New York Times bestselling Random Acts of Kindness series and the author of a number of books. The former CEO and Editorial Director of Conari Press, in 2000, M.J. Ryan joined Professional Thinking Partners (PTP), an asset-focused consultancy. Dubbed "an expert in human fulfilment," she specializes in coaching high performance executives, entrepreneurs, and leadership teams around the world.

As one of the nation's leading experts on the art of maximizing human potential, former Entertainment Attorney, Marshawn Evans is Founder of ME Unlimited (Marshawn Evans Unlimited), a corporate life-enrichment consulting firm focusing on peak performance, diversity, women's empowerment and leadership. Marshawn is author of SKIRTS in the Boardroom: A Woman's Survival Guide to Success in Business & Life.

Don Tapscott is an internationally sought authority, consultant and speaker on business strategy and organizational transformation. His latest book Grown Up Digital offers valuable insight and concrete takeaways for leaders across all social institutions.

Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter is widely regarded as the world's foremost authority on leadership and change. Kotter's international bestseller Leading Change has become the change bible for managers around the world. His latest book is called A Sense of Urgency and in it he shows what a true sense of urgency really is.

Robert Camp is a leading authority on benchmarking and its use to obtain best practice knowledge and superior performance. He is the Principal of the Best Practice Institute, an international research, education and consultancy organization focused on the capture, exchange and adoption of worldwide best practices through benchmarking.

While businesses have spent more than a trillion dollars on business management consulting and training in the past decade, research shows that a large majority of organizations are still failing to execute their strategies effectively...

Henri-Claude de Bettignies is the AVIVA Chair Emeritus Professor of Leadership and Responsibility and is Emeritus Professor of Asian Business and Comparative Management at INSEAD. He is also Distinguished Professor of Global Responsible Leadership at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai. Here, he speaks about the development of China as a world power.

Nikos Mourkogiannis is a senior partner at Panthea, a global consulting firm advising chairmen and CEOs on leadership. He is also senior executive advisor on leadership to Booz Allen Hamilton. He previously worked for Monitor Company, a strategic consulting firm founded by Harvard Business School Professors Michael Porter and Mark Fuller.

Professor Colin Mellors is Adviser to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of York and Director of Higher Education Strategy for Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency. A political scientist, Colin Mellors has taught at Bradford, Sheffield and Southampton universities. He continues to research and write in the field of political science.

Stuart Hart is the S.C. Johnson Chair of Sustainable Global Enterprise and Professor of Management at Cornell University's Johnson School of Management. Before joining Cornell in 2003, he was the Hans Zulliger Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Enterprise and Professor of Strategic Management at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School.

Based in London, Anne Deering is a Vice President of the international consulting group of A.T. Kearney. She has 25 years consulting experience in Europe and North America, during which time she has worked primarily in the areas of business change, leadership and team development, organizational learning, organization design, and strategy.

PricewaterhouseCoopers conducts an Annual Global CEO Survey, intended to learn the views of chief executives about the defining forces shaping the global competitive landscape. The survey's director is Daniel Di Filippo, PricewaterhouseCoopers' Global Leader of Performance Improvement. Here he talks about the survey's findings and how globalization is not a policy...

Steve Denning, organizational storyteller extraordinaire, is the author of the acclaimed book The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (Butterworth Heinemann, 2000) which describes how storytelling can serve as a powerful tool for organizational change and knowledge management.

Dr. Michael Hammer is the driving force behind the business process revolution. He is the originator of both reengineering and the process enterprise, concepts that have changed forever how businesses around the world do business. Dr. Hammer is the author of four books, including the international best-seller Reengineering the Corporation.

Fons Trompenaars has worked as a consultant for Shell, BP, ICI, Philips, Heineken, Mars, Motorola, General Motors, Nike, Cable and Wireless, and Merrill Lynch. He has been named as one of the 50 most influential management thinkers alive. Read what he has to say about the challenges of organizational culture and diversity in this exclusive interview.

David K. Hurst has published articles in leading business publications such the Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, and Strategy+Business, among others. He spent more than 25 years as a senior operating manager in a number of diversified companies. His expertise lies in strategy, leadership and change.

As founder and director of FirstMatter LLC, Watts Wacker has focused his attention on creating a new kind of think tank and he describes himself as a 21st century alchemist as well as "a cross between James Brown and the unknown comic, (the hardest working nobody in the business.)" His speaking style has created many references to Mr. Wacker as being one of the best storytellers alive today.

Gary L. Neilson & Bruce A. Pasternack have researched companies in industries ranging from high-tech to financial services to industrial equipment. This included some 50,000 questionnaires completed by managers and business professionals. Their findings, the foundation of the book Results, were named one of Harvard Business Review's "Breakthrough Ideas for 2005."

Akbar Al Baker is the Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Airways. He became CEO in 1997 after a very successful career within the State of Qatar's Department of Civil Aviation. Mr Al Baker re-launched Qatar Airways in 1997 and has implemented an aggressive 10-year strategic plan to extend the airline's route network, build a modern fleet, and create Doha as a major regional aviation hub.

Constantinos ('Costas') Markides is Professor of Strategic and International Management and holds the Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership at the London Business School. Professor Markides has also taught in-company programmes for numerous companies including Unilever, British Aerospace, Pirelli, Honeywell, Wellcome, Polygram, Mercury Asset Management, Nestlé, ABF and LVMH.

Jerry I. Porras is the Lane Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Change Emeritus at Stanford University. Along with Jim Collins, he is the co-author of the international bestseller Built to Last which sold more copies than any other business book over the past decade. In this interview read what he has to say about the core values and beliefs of enduring visionary companies.

Dr Michael Treacy is co-founder and chief strategist of GEN3 Partners, a science-based R&D services company based in Boston, USA and St. Petersburg, Russia. In this interview, read what he has to say about the development and significance of a controversial topic within the change arena – the management of offshore operations.

René Carayol is a business guru with unmatched credentials. He is the author of Corporate Voodoo, a regular voice on BBC Radio 5 Live in the UK, a Non-Executive Director of the UK Inland Revenue and a former Director of IPC Media. In this interview, read what he has to say about radical change, leadership, managing transformation and globalization.

Richard Pascale talks about the relevance of complexity science to management. Pascale - a leading international consultant and bestselling author - has worked with CEOs and top management worldwide as a general management advisor and expert on strategic transformation. His client list includes Coca Cola, Levi Strauss, General Electric and Intel.

Gary Hamel is a founder and chairman of Strategos, a consulting firm based in Menlo Park, California and visiting professor of strategic and international management at the London School of Business. Read what he has to say about the impetus for radical change in business and how it must come from the ideas and energies of the people within the company, not from consultants or external advisors.